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Summary Social Psychology FULLY! (HU)
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Samenvatting Social Psychology plus MyPsychLab with Pearson eText, Global Edition, ISBN: 9781292186634 Sociale Psychologie
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Sociale Psychologie SamenvattingTentamen
Chapter 1 Introducing Social Psychology
Social Psychology= the scientific study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings and
behaviours are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people /
the study of the psychological processes people have in common that make them
susceptible to social influence.
Social Influence= the effect that the words, actions or mere presence of other people have
on our thoughts, feelings, attitudes or behaviour.
Our thoughts, feelings and actions are influenced by our immediate surroundings, including
the presence of other people and even mere strangers.
Hypothesis about the nature of the social world → well-controlled experiments.
Personality psychologists study qualities of the individual that might make a person have
certain traits (like shyness, rebelliousness, etc.). Social psychologists study the powerful role
of social influence on how all of us behave. Social Psychology works in the overlap in the
two disciplines: Sociology and Personality Psychology.
Sociology Social Psychology Personality Psychology
The study of group, The study of the The study of the
organizations and societies, psychological processes characteristics that make
rather than individuals people have in common that individuals unique and
make them susceptible to different from one another
social influence
The level of analysis= the group, institution, or society at large.
The goal of Social Psychology= to identify properties of human nature that make almost
everyone susceptible to social influence, regardless of social class or culture.
Cross cultural research= most findings have been tested in the US, so aren’t universal. This
research is valuable, because it sharpens theories by showing its universality or discovers
additional variables important for improving our understanding of human behaviour.
The Importance of Explanation
Fundamental Attribution Error= The tendency to overestimate the extent to which people’s
behaviour is due to internal, dispositional factors and to underestimate the role of situational
factors. Explaining someone behaviour in terms of personality traits and underestimating the
power of social influence and the immediate situation. Gives us false security, for example
thinking something could never happen to us, it was simply due to an individual being
‘flawed’.
,The Importance of Interpretation
Behaviorism= A school of psychology maintaining that to understand human behaviour, one
need only consider the reinforcing properties of the environment. Behaviour can be
understood by examining the rewards and punishments in the organism’s environment. The
importance of interpretation is overlooked.
Construal= the way in which people perceive, comprehend and interpret the social world.
Gestalt Psychology= a school of psychology stressing the importance of studying the
subjective way in which an object appears in people’s minds rather than the objective,
physical attributes of the object.
Basic Human Motives
2 central motives → 1: the need to feel good about ourselves, 2: the need to be accurate.
The need to feel good about ourselves can fly in the face of the need to be accurate and can
have catastrophic consequences.
The Self-Esteem Motive – The Need to Feel Good About Ourselves
Self-Esteem= People’s evaluations of their own self-worth–that is, the extent to which they
view themselves as good, competent and decent. Can be negative if people use it to justify
their actions instead of learning from them.
People usually choose the option that puts them in the best possible light so they can feel
better about themselves.
Suffering and Self-Justification= human beings are motivated to maintain a positive picture of
themselves, in part by justifying their behaviour, and that under certain specifiable
conditions, this leads them to do things that at first glance might seem surprising or
paradoxical. They might prefer people and things for whom they have suffered to people and
things they associate with ease and pleasure.
The Social Cognition Motive – The Need to Be Accurate
Social Cognition= how people think about themselves and the social world; more specifically,
how people select, interpret, remember, and use social information to make judgements and
decisions.
We often make mistakes because we almost never have all the facts to judge a given
situation accurately.
Self-fulfilling prophecy= you expect that you or another person will behave in some way, so
you act in certain ways to make your prediction come true.
Chapter 8 Conformity – Influencing Behavior
Conformity= a change in one’s behavior due to the real or imagined influence of other
people.
Informational Social Influence= Relying on other people as a source of information to guide
our behavior; we conform because we believe that others’ interpretation of an ambiguous
situation is correct and can help us choose an appropriate course of action.
If people do not know what to do in an unusual or confusing situation they usually act similar
like the people around them, or they respond the same because they do not want to be
ridiculed or punished for being different from everybody else.
, Private Acceptance= Conforming to other people’s behavior out of a genuine belief that what
they are doing or saying is right.
Public Compliance= Conforming to other people’s behavior publicly without necessarily
believing in what other people are doing or saying.
Saying that other people are doing a positive thing for the environment is more convincing
than saying to do a positive thing for the environment.
The Importance of Being Accurate
A high-importance condition / being highly motivated to ‘get things right’ makes you more
susceptible to informational social influence.
There are 3 situations where people are most likely to produce conformity:
1. WHEN THE SITUATION IS AMBIGUOUS→ the more uncertain you are, the more
you will rely on others.
2. WHEN THE SITUATION IS A CRISIS→ in a crisis we don’t have time to think about
exactly what action we must take. When people are scared and panicky they are
more likely to rely on others instead of behaving rationally.
3. WHEN OTHER PEOPLE ARE EXPERTS→ the more expertise or knowledge a
person has, the more valuable he or she will be as a guide in an ambiguous situation.
However experts are not always a reliable source of information.
The Need to Be Accepted
Social Norms= the implicit or explicit rules a group has for the acceptable behaviors, values,
and beliefs of its members. Deviant group members are often ridiculed, punished or even
rejected by other group members.
Being deprived of human contact is stressful, traumatic and psychologically painful. So it is
not surprising that we sometimes conform to gain acceptance from others.
Normative Social Influence= going along with what other people do in order to be liked and
accepted by them; we publicly conform with the group’s beliefs and behaviors but do not
always privately accept them.
The Ash Line Judgemental Studies= experiment by Solomon Asch. Participants judged
which of the three comparison lines was closest in length to the single line on the left. The
correct answer was always obvious, however members of the group have the wrong answer,
on purpose, out loud. The participant could choose between going against the entire group
and giving the right answer or giving an obviously wrong answer (76% conformed at least
once).
The situation is not ambiguous, a crisis and the other people are not experts → there were
normative pressures, although the other group members were complete strangers. People
do not want to appear foolish. When participants were the only ones to write down their
answers, conformity dropped dramatically.
Conformity for normative reasons= can occur simply because we do not want to risk social
disapproval, even from complete strangers we will never see again. Normative Social
Influence occurs because people feel negative emotions such as discomfort and tension
when they go against the group.
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